Elon Musk’s social media company X, formerly Twitter, is slashing more than half of its team tasked with fighting misinformation tied to elections ahead of the 2024 presidential election, according to a report.
X cut four election integrity staffers, including the team’s head, based in Ireland, UPI reported citing a report from The Information.
The social media platform’s executives told the team in Dublin that “having integrity employees based in Europe wasn’t necessary,” the outlet reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.
The firings mean the team has been cut to less than half in North America, the outlet reported.
Musk appeared to confirm the report on X Wednesday.
“Oh you mean the ‘Election Integrity’ Team that was undermining election integrity? Yeah, they’re gone,” he tweeted.
The company had about two dozen staffers devoted to election integrity before Musk bought it for $44 billion last year. Now, there reportedly might be at most six staffers left.
The reduction comes after Musk signaled he would beef up the team. The Post previously reported there was a plan to grow X’s so-called “Trust and Safety” team to monitor disinformation.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino also recently told the Financial Times the company was planning to expand its safety and election teams globally.
X has also disabled a feature that let users report misinformation about elections on the platform, a research organization said Wednesday, Reuters reported.
After first rolling out the feature in 2022 that let accounts report a post they considered politically misleading, the app removed that category from its drop-down menu everywhere but the European Union, researcher Reset.Tech Australia said.
Other concerning posts about promoting violence or hate speech can still be reported, the researcher noted.
Musk has downsized X’s workforce by about 80% since he took over.
